Lucca

Apr. 27, 2009

I just got back from staying in Lucca for five days with my family. Lucca is my favorite place in Italy and where I would live if I had to pick a place. It's a small town but it is big enough that it has shopping and lots of restaurants. It's extremely clean and the wall that encloses the town is thirty feet wide so everyone rides bikes and walks their dogs along the wall which is covered in gardens and flowers and overlooks Lucca. We got to Lucca in the evening and right away went out to dinner at a restaurant called Buca di Sant'Antonio. It was overrated and overpriced in my opinion although they did have some extravagant dishes like duck and boar that I didn't try so maybe those are great. In the morning we decided to go for a bike ride along the wall. I didn't know I could have so much fun on a bike but it was so nice out and the wall was so pretty that I did. We decided to catch a train to a town called Montecatini Terme where there are natural hot springs. It was very tropical and reminded me of a ritzy Caribbean town. We had lunch and decided the hot springs weren't exactly what we hoped they'd be so we took a taxi to Montecatini Alto which was on top of a mountain overlooking Terme. It was amazing there and the views were ridiculous. My dad loved it! There were lots of little cafes and big fancy villas on the cliffside. That night my mom and I went to apertivo at the hotel bar and had a glass of wine. We went to dinner at a little restaurant which we ended up going back to 2 more times because we absolutely loved it. It's called Bastian Contrario and it's only been open for 5 months. The owner is Italian and says he doesn't speak English but it's just because he's shy.. eventually we got him to try and he was fine. In the a.m. we got up and went to Pisa and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing back in Lucca. We went to a restaurant called Da Leo for dinner and Doug (the world's pickiest eater) got Carpaccio, raw slices of beef, to eat?? The following morning we decided we'd go to Cinque Terre and luckily we had perfect weather. Allie met us at the train station in Monterosso. We decided we'd get something food/drink related in every one of the five towns. In Monterosso we got appetizers: bruschetta and antipasto. In Vernazza we got lunch at Gianni Franzi. We hiked from Vernazza to Corniglia which was a crazy hike and now I understand what they meant when they said "repairing the trails" before because it literally looked like there had been a landslide or would be one shortly every 20 feet along the cliffside path. The hike took about 90 minutes and luckily there was a man selling water 3/4 of the way through. When we got to Corniglia we stopped and got a local dessert wine that's only made in Cinque Terre called Scciachetra. It was really good so we bought a bottle to bring home. We took the train from Corniglia to Manarola where we didn't end up eating anything, but by the time we got off the Via dell'Amore we all needed a snack so we stopped at a restaurant for salads. My mom and I went out to dinner at Bastian Contrario. We ordered a cheese platter and the guy gave us a huge assortment of the best cheeses along with honey and jams to put on them. We also got an antipasto platter and by then I was so full I cancelled my entree order. After dinner the owner brought us a dessert that tasted like baked peach french toast and Finnish Pancakes combined, it was amazing and he told us his mom made it! Then he gave us glasses of a Lucchese (Luccan) dessert drink called Biadina that had pine nuts in it. We ended up buying bottles of that too and as we were leaving he gave us a bag of these delicious biscotti to take back to the hotel with us (he was so sweet,) so we went back to San Luca Palace with our hands full :) Yesterday was the only day it rained so we stayed in Lucca for the day and walked around town. I was tired so I stayed in my hotel room and talked to Josh for a while on the phone because he finally had a day off (yay!) Lastnight we went back to Bastian Contrario with the whole family and again had a great meal. Today my family is flying home and I'm on the train back to Florence now :)